198 Mississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



'Tis true that the first efforts made to establish the industry of orcharding 

 on the Western prairies was confronted with serious and compUcated diffi- 

 culties. The influence of a peculiar climate upon the productive elements 

 of an untried soil had not been determined. The methods of culture and 

 varieties of fruit which had proven reliable in the more eastern sections 

 when applied to these regions failed to respond to satisfactory results. The 

 experience of time was required to solve these questions. Here then was 

 opened up a field for extensivs experimentation in which would be required 

 the skill of the most intelligent culturist. 



The work of determining a system of successful processes was one neces- 

 sitating a line of effort starting with the first principles. How well this work 

 lias been done will be seen as we proceed. 



Returning to our topic of orcharding on the plains: What means this 

 term, "on the plains?" I can well remember when a lad and attending 

 school, the geographical authorities applied this term to all sections embrac- 

 ing iDi'airie countries, and which then included the States of Illinois, Iowa, 

 portions of Minnesota and the broad territory extending westward to the 

 Rocky Mountains. Still later its eastern boundaries were commonly accept- 

 ed to run about with the ninety-fifth meridian, or the eastern line of Kansas 

 and Nebraska, and afterwards to recede westAvard to near the ninety-sixth, 

 and still later to the ninety-seventh, and to-day, if you chance to converse 

 with the settlers living about the ninety-eighth meridian, they will tell you 

 " the plains " are to their Avestward. How then shall we apply ourselves to the 

 subject ; certainly not as bearing upon territory lying east of Kansas and Ne- 

 braska. There" the pursuit has already become an established industry, and 

 successful methods for treatment and a list of reliable varieties have become 

 familiar as household words. 



The same may be said of Eastern Kansas, Western Missouri and Nebraska. 

 Why, Mr. President, the product of the orchards within this belt for 1883 

 bears on its face uncontrovertible evidence of the success of orcharding on 

 the plains, if we are to accept such sections as a part of the plains. In Ne- 

 braska, Otoe county alone produced 70,000 bushels of apples in 1883. In 

 Kansas there were quite a number of the older counties which produced 

 over 100,000 bushels of apples each, and on one day in November, says the 

 Denver papers, twenty-one cars loaded Avith this product arrived in that city 

 from Kansas. Omaha authority says a train loaded with apples grown in 

 Brown and Leavenworth counties, Kansas, passed through that city the past 

 fall en route for Idaho and other points West. This city in which we are con- 

 vened has annually for years past been a depot of supply for the Western and 

 Eastern markets of thousands of barrels gathered in from its State and the 

 contiguous i:)lains. The years 1882 and 1883 Avitnessed the unexpected as well 

 as surprising occurrence in the trade demands of thousands of bushels of ap- 

 ples being sent EastAvard and into Southern markets, the product of these 

 "plains."' I might pursue this line and add further material evidence to 

 shoAv that orcharding has become a profitable industry on the plains, but I 



